THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: VIOLENCE

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: VIOLENCE; New Targets: Attackers Shift Their Sights to the Iraqis

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: February 13, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 12—
The fourth deadly suicide bombing in Iraq in less than two weeks suggests that the insurgency that has bedeviled the Americans and Iraqis since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government is changing in important ways.

Since peaking in mid-November, attacks against American soldiers have dropped by more than half, and the gun battles between American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents that used to mark daily life in many cities and towns seem in many places to be on the wane.

At the same time, attacks have increasingly focused on Iraqi civilians, particularly those who are seen to be collaborating with the American-led occupation.

And the attacks are less likely to involve rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs from Baathist arsenals.

Instead, suicide bombings have aimed to inflict maximum damage on Iraqi institutions like the police and military that are central to the American effort to turn over the reins of government by June 30.

Some American and Iraqi officials call these changes evidence that the insurgency is being sustained by foreign fighters with links to international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, as the ranks of Mr. Hussein's cadre are thinned by capture or death.

The suicide attacks in particular, many officials here say, imply a foreign hand. That idea was strengthened earlier this week when American officials reported that they had obtained a document written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with well-established links to Al Qaeda, claiming credit for 25 suicide bombings in the country and making clear that it was difficult to recruit Iraqis.

''We do not believe these suicide bombings are being carried out by Iraqis,'' said Ibrahim al-Janabi, deputy chief of the Iraqi National Accord, a political party with historic ties to the C.I.A. ''They have no history of this. Our evidence suggests that most of the recent attacks -- Najaf, Nasiriya, the U.N. bombing -- were being carried out by foreigners.''

At a news conference this week, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's deputy chief of operations, said preliminary evidence pointed to Al Qaeda's involvement in Tuesday's attack on a police station in Iskandariya, which killed 54 people.

An American military official said the bombing in November in Nasiriya, which killed 31, used a signature Qaeda method: a lead car crashed through the gates of the Italian military compound, clearing the way for a truck loaded with explosives.

Some American officials say foreign fighters, often driven by religious zeal, have formed ''tactical alliances'' with former Baath Party members to carry out attacks; others say foreigers are taking over as Iraqi militants fall away.

''There are no conclusions, but that looks like what we are seeing,'' one military official said.

Such conclusions are politically convenient. They echo the Bush administration's assertions, since before the war, that the invasion was a battle in a larger campaign against terrorism. Claiming that foreign fighters are taking over the insurgency also bolsters the administration's position that the Iraqis themselves have been largely won over.

Certainly, tensions between Iraqis and American troops have eased noticeably in many towns and cities in the area north and west of Baghdad where much of the insurgency has played out. In many places there, the Americans have pulled back substantially, turning over responsibility for keeping order to Iraqi forces.

In Baghdad, the Americans are far less visible than they once were, and are planning further pullbacks. In formerly chaotic towns like Ramadi and Falluja, the Americans have mostly shut down their posts and camped outside of town.

''The security situation has gotten much better,'' Sheik Majid Ali Suleiman, a powerful tribal leader in Ramadi, said in an interview this week. ''You don't see the Americans in the city anymore. That's good. And they have arrested a lot of the big people who were making the attacks.''

But tensions have only eased, not disappeared. Iraqis turn cold, hard glares at Americans in the area west of Baghdad, the so-called Sunni triangle; attacks continue. On Thursday, gunmen in Falluja fired at a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of American forces in the Middle East; the attackers seemed to have been tipped that someone important would be visiting.

And other than the captured document, little hard evidence of foreign involvement in the insurgency has surfaced.

Military commanders along Iraq's borders have said they saw little infiltration. American officials estimate that foreigners make up between 5 and 10 percent of perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents. But the layered estimates add up largely to guesswork.

Some American officials say they have about 300 foreign fighters in custody; others say the number is not that high.

The evidence can be murky or contradictory. On the same evening that General Kimmitt was saying the Iskandariya bombing appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim of the Iraqi police said the engine number of the truck used in that attack indicated that it once belonged to one of Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers.

Part of the problem is that it is often difficult to identify a suicide bomber.

But not always: on Oct. 27, a suicide bomber who drove his truck into a Baghdad police station failed to detonate his bomb. He was shot instead, and the Iraqi police found a Syrian passport in his possession. Mr. Janabi, of the Iraqi National Accord, said the man turned out to be from Yemen.

Photo: No weapons of mass destruction here. An Iraqi police officer, part of a growing force, checks a car in Baghdad for bombs but hears ''baa.'' (Photo by Agence France-Presse--Getty Images)